


the borderlines we drew between us.

by failsafe



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Families of Choice, Friendship, Headcanon, Other, POV Multiple, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 10:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There wasn't always just negative space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the borderlines we drew between us.

**Author's Note:**

> The year markings are approximations based on the years of the Kaiju War. This fic holds that Chuck and Mako are more or less the same age (even though canon has had several different iterations of this). This fic is written with love for makotako and isladelmar.

**the end.**

It's never been a love story, so when it comes to an end they don't say a word to each other. The time for words between them died a long time ago. Every word there's time for is, first, for the mission. Every other word there's time for is, second, for _sensei—_ the second father she'll have loved and then lose. And, finally, the last few words are for him and the father he's already lost.

So they don't say a word.

**from year four.**

She's hushing him in the midst of laughing, giggling so tightly and uncontrollably that even when she tries to quiet herself, she squeaks.

“You _hush_ yourself,” he answers, his voice dropping a register and keeping itself there with shaky handling. He smirks, and she knows it's a fragile facade.

“They'll kill you,” she warns.

“Oh, and what about you? Stacker Pentecost's daughter. Fraternizing with the castoff,” he _cries out_ in a way that she knows is meant to draw a reaction. She reacts, her hand immediately clamping over his mouth. She feels a sudden swath of wriggling dampness against her fingers and she just as quickly recoils, shaking out her hand.

“Oh, you're okay with Max, but me—“ he says, pretending to be hurt.

“Max is a dog.”

“My point.”

She sighs, wiping her hand against his jaw first to make a point and then down against the sheets beneath her. They're both still dressed in identical trousers, identical belts, identical t-shirts except those are starting to fit quite differently. Not long ago, they hadn't really. She props securely against her elbow and squirms to try and maintain the small, courteous gap between their bodies.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“Nothing. Only the pleasure of your company, geisha-girl,” he says. She knows he only wants her to balk and bristle, but she can't help her glaring.

“I can make you leave,” she warns.

“The night before my birthday? And you're the _only_ one who remembered,” he guilts her, and she knows it and he knows it. That doesn't make it any less—evidently—true.

“No, Chuck. I'm not... trying to make you leave.”

“Good.”

“You can't stay all night,” she cautions, glancing at the digital readout at the bottom corner of the small television screen which is otherwise dark.

“Maybe that's my birthday present,” he says. Her glance is sharp, narrowed again. She feels a little drop in her stomach. Maybe it's guilt or something else, but then she dismisses it completely, seeing the wistful, sad look in his lighter eyes.

“If you do, we'll both have a very bad day,” she says, enunciating each syllable more carefully than usual in a chastising, maybe parental tone.

For some reason, just for a moment, he lights up before adopting his deep frown again. He shifts onto his back which makes her back inch closer to the edge of the bed for one, but she's still safe, secure, balanced. She wonders if he's even going to respond for a while, her brow inching down into a tighter furrow each time her doubt deepens another degree. She doesn't want to be rude to him on the night before his birthday.

“Sing to me,” he commands suddenly, a little too loud, making her jump.

“... But I don't know—“ she starts to excuse herself.

“Everybody knows 'Happy Birthday,'” he corrects her, a little whiny in his dismissal, his chin changing angle slightly as he looks at her, his eyes more heavily lidded. He looks almost content except for the little prying she feels in her chest just below her throat.

She hums, feeling it resonate behind her nose—it's a response, begrudging and slow agreement, rather than the beginning of a tune. Sliding up her bed a little, her arm is looped around the shape of the top of his head, his hair tickling just a little against her forearm. She sings, but it's only part- _Happy Birthday_.

Singing to him in the quiet, barely lit room feels like the most clandestine thing she's ever done.

**from year six.**

He's jealous, honestly. He inspects the living room from the doorway to the kitchen, studying it and wondering how it seems so _clean_. There's a floral print on the sofa where she sits, knees tucked to her chest and legs half-exposed in white cotton, shortened trousers that are most certainly not like his. She's got a book against her kneecaps, and he wonders if he ought to dust himself off somehow before he sits on _her_ furniture. Because there's no way this is all the Marshall's furniture. It's for her. He can see that, and he imagines that any idiot could.

He shifts his weight from foot to foot and wonders how long it's going to take her to take her nose out of her book and notice. He wonders if he ought to ask, but then he'd feel guilty. This isn't like when she's studying and trapped in thought—she looks like she's actually enjoying herself a little bit. But he can't hear anything but the dull murmur of familiar chatting between _his father_ and Stacker Pentecost.

Every time he hears it again, it's weird.

What's weirder is to know how much his father seems to enjoy it, when their entire recess from school is mostly spent with Herc Hansen being absolutely beside himself, no matter how close he manages to be. Granted, he's basically given up trying. Only tonight is different. Visiting like normal people before the War is an experiment he's willing to perform, especailly since—naturally—she's here.

Then he hears a word from the very depths of Pentecost's voice, a weary groan, that interests him.

“—Becket—“

He listens. And then he's grinning with a fanciful satisfaction he can't get out of his head. Someone getting under the Marshall's skin enough to make him confide in a friend. There's something delicious about it, however unsolvable a puzzle the Marshall has always been to everyone—except perhaps his daughter, and she's certainly not been sharing.

Emboldened by the quiet complicity with the Becket brothers he feels because of his private grinning he _knows_ would get him called out by the Marshall if he saw him or even knew that he'd heard, he slides over to the sofa and flops down in the center by her. His arm spreads along the back of the couch, casually draping around her without any real contact, his knees spread apart and only polite enough that the nearer one doesn't knock hers.

“ _Damare_ ,” she says to him the moment he lolls his head over with an excessive casualness, head rolling against the back of the sofa.

“Oh, I see. You're just jealous.”

She rolls her eyes, neatly marks her place in her book, and looks at him with her chin nearly touching her still-bent knee.

“Of who?”

“Me. Or of them, if I do say so myself.”

She sighs, and he knows he's got her. It's not really fair, but he knows she'll tolerate it—him voicing his fancy once more. It makes it a little more real and in reach each time he says it, and it feels almost slightly sacred like throwing a coin down into a well to say it in the Marshall's house. He's in direct command of them.

He waits. He's still just met with her patient-impatient stare, so he takes that as permission to proceed.

“I'm gonna Drift with one of them one day.”

“Oh?” Still patient-impatient.

“You know that's not gonna last,” he says, jerking his head in the direction of the doorway to the kitchen where their food is still cooking. “He's going to have to split them up one day—divide and conquer. My money's on the older one washing out first, but I'd take either of them.”

“What makes you think you're Drift Compatible with either of them?”

“I just know it, yeah? It's a _feeling_.”

She hums and eyes the spine of her book again, and he sees the searching for some more _productive_ focus in her eyes. But he's not finished yet. Deciding not to be utterly selfish, he decides to ask her a question about _her_ , though.

“Why? You've never just... _known_ about somebody?”

She looks at him again, and this time when he's met with silence—he feels a little bit of guilt and a little bit of hope and a little bit of curiosity.

He can't read that look but he wonders if it means she knows about him.

**from year seven.**

“Would you hold on just a goddamn—“ he calls after her, his boots thudding so hard against the floor as he pursues her that it makes his ankles hurt in a way training never would.

She steps up to go into her room but then rounds on him, her hand staying against the handle but dropping back down. She steps back down and she's smaller but backing him back down the hall just the same.

“No, I won't!”

“It's just fucking _trials_ , Mako,” he says, and this time his voice is edged with compassion, but it's so _tired_ already. She's being ridiculous. He thinks. But then a part of him also thinks that it's just gone wrong, that it's just been a bad day.

“You don't see it because it's not you,” she says lowly, her head bowing slightly forward though she looks up still to meet his eyes.

“Are you telling me you're _jealous_? So I had a better day. So _what_? Not my fault your dad's your dad.”

And he knows he's done it—again—because the shake of her head is so slight. It's strange, seeing only the front of her hair swing because the rest of it's been trimmed off. He sees the blue tips and for the first time in his distracted, fucking thick mind, he thinks— _blue_. She'd done it. For today. For this.

“... It looks nice,” he says, lifting a hand and pointing vaguely to indicate her hair. Wrong thing. Because there isn't a right thing, and she's headed for her door again, if more slowly this time.

“I hope you do well tomorrow,” she says as her key turns and the door gives way. She pauses, and he knows she's looking at him, but his gaze moves right past her and toward the small, tight, crisp-looking bunk, so similar to the tiny free-standing thing in school. Hers had always been tucked to the wall anyway. When he does look at her, his gaze flits to her fingers as she holds the door open. He almost pleads with them, but the plea is gone by the time he meets her eyes.

A part of him knows that when she closes the door, it's never going to be the same. There's a kernel of rage hardening inside him, and it's new. And there's something lost in the way the blue reflects the light differently than the black in her hair—she's hardening, too. Not one to believe in fate as such, most of the time, he suddenly feels really stupid. Because when he's got something like _Drift Compatibility_ hanging over his head, swinging back and forth all _pit and pendulum_ over the thread tethering him to the only person he's _known_ for years, mocking it and calling it no thread at all, how could he not believe in fate? And it's a bitch.

He wants to step up after her, leveling out their height to normal again. He knows that in just a few seconds, she'll shake her head again and step inside, closing the door behind her. What he wants is to step inside with her and plead and cling and _fight_ for something. But another glance to the tiny bed that they won't both fit it anymore without tangling wholly together, he knows it isn't going to happen. What was he supposed to fight with? Touch, skin, heat? Never going to happen. No charge, no spark--just a dull, hungry, crying ache for her, because, God, he—But something that should have happened before now hasn't happened to make that possible, and he knows the solution that presents itself is a stupid fantasy with no form. All he wants is to go in there and be kids with her again. Only one problem.

They've never been children.

**from year ten.**

The first time they see each other and don't speak at all, she's a little surprised her father doesn't say anything. She knows he must notice. And yet, she tries to pretend that she doesn't.

Her back is straight when he walks past, and when she breathes in as he walks past, half-outfitted in his drivesuit. It feels defensive, taking in the air all around her so he can't snatch it away and draw some desperate reprimand for her. _No, stop. Listen. Before it's too late, listen._

Or, worse than anything, she doesn't want to let it slip to him because the jealousy is there, eating at her like something working its way out from the marrow of her bones. She glances up at her father to her left again, clutching a little tighter to her clipboard. She is half-aware that the display makes her look small, weak, self-conscious. And perhaps part of it is that he's made her feel small, weak, and self-conscious.

He has. But which one?

She won't say it, though. She won't tell him—either of them—that _it's not fair._

She shuts her eyes for a moment and forces the greedily drawn breath out, realizing that there's a familiar scent mixed in with it—something like soap that she remembers. And now she's old enough to know all that it means, those hours in secretly half-shared rooms at school, and what it doesn't mean. What it never will mean.

Once, he'd called her _'co-pilot.'_ It'd been a joke at the end of their successful campaign against their fathers to allow them to join the ranks together and before the minimum age to have been allowed before. Now it hurts, because she looks at the big, rounded out shoulders covered in defensive plating and wonders how it's ever happened that her father has left her open, exposed, _without that_. The man in front of her will never be, would never have been, her co-pilot. They all said so. She knew why now.

Apparently, not trusting someone _that much_ means not trusting them at all. Their eyes meet. There's a wrinkle of displeasure in his nose.

She looks away.

**day zero.**

The first time he sees her, standing there in a dark, long coat with two rows of buttons, he thinks she looks every bit as uniform as the Marshall. Something about it makes him sneer, so when he hears the slobbery snort of Max's breath, he gets an idea. He reaches down and unhooks the leash. There's a sudden back-and-forth of movement, and he doesn't have to look up to know what his father's face looks like as he's glancing around, confused.

“Hey, come on, now! Get that—“

He doesn't listen, just watches as his bulldog saunters over to the little girl. Her back is so straight and tall—like the Marshall's—except for the way she holds onto his uniform's jacket. He wonders just how long it will take for Max's slobbery jowls and his snorting, grunting breath to make the little girl squeal and flounder away. It's not that he means her harm, but as he stays crouched down with his shoulders cast slightly forward, he hates the way her posture never gives way. She doesn't look at him.

Suddenly, she does tear her gaze away from the Marshall's face.

“ _Wan-chan_!”

The outburst from the little girl's lips isn't the one he was expecting. First of all, it's actual words—a single word?—just not in English. He's not sure why, but he'd expected disgust, but instead he watches as she folds to her knees and her fingers splay out to either side of Max's wrinkled flesh, cradling his big head. She doesn't seem at all put off by the slobber even though it's certain some of it is getting on her perfect coat.

He's ready to move, to grab hold of Max's collar and draw him back when he catches the sharp movement of dark on white as Stacker Pentecost's gaze transfers to him. He wishes he'd stood up again, now.

“Chuck,” the Marshall addresses, and somehow his posture straightens even further. His chin ducks down as he nods toward the girl crouched at his side, petting his dog. “Why don't you come say hello?”

He stands, but his shoulders roll back as he bristles slightly at the friendly demand for apology and _decorum_. He hasn't even done anything—at least, he hasn't given how the little girl has reacted. One step and then another and he's in front of his father before the Marshall, noting how much taller he happens to be than the girl in front of him. He finally remembers to wonder why she's there. He knows why he is—there isn't anywhere else for him to be. Not when school's not in session. His father has to put up with him for a while.

“This is Mako Mori.”

Her gaze lifts up, and he is met with even darker, more piercing eyes than the Marshall's. He thinks they're shinier, though—like she's about to cry, only he's pretty sure she isn't. She stands, the way she moves speaking of some incredible, sneaky strength running like titanium plating along her abdomen and up her spine. She reminds him of the Jaegers only—probably— much more capable of dancing. She takes a breath, swallowing it with some audible effort, and upon her exhale she's all perfect posture again. Her hand still shiny in one place where dog saliva still coats it as she extends it out to shake his.

He can't help noticing the little glance up at Stacker Pentecost for his approval.

**Author's Note:**

> This has a fanmix that goes with it here: http://8tracks.com/failsafe/i-wanted-her-to-be-chuck-hansen-mako-mori
> 
> And if you'd like to share on tumblr please use [this post](http://failsafeparoxysm.tumblr.com/post/66926470242/i-wanted-her-to-be-chuck-hansen-mako-mori-and).


End file.
